Employees are brands too

Businesses tend to focus on external marketing. However, selling the brand to staff is as important. Johan Bolt, director of new brand consultancy, Johan Bolt & Associates, says, "A company's brand has to be understood, accepted and promoted by every employee. It is your employees who make your brand come alive."

Unfortunately, internal marketing is neglected or done badly. Executives acknowledge that staff have to be kept up to date with a company's direction. Companies set up intranets, send out memos and newsletters and hold regular meetings. But employees have to be convinced of the power and uniqueness of the company's brand. "They have to be passionate about it," says Bolt, "if the brand is going to be consistent at every step along the value chain."

Face-to-face contact with front-line staff is more credible than a 30-second television commercial. A rude receptionist or bad after-sales service can immeasurably damage a brand. Therefore, it is essential to inculcate an appreciation of the company's brand in every employee as part of any training programme. This has to help the staff to understand, believe in and actively implement the promises given by the marketing department.

An interesting example was given by Jeremy Maggs on his programme media@safm, recently. He had praised the new Total television advertisement - the one with the 'boot camp' training for forecourt staff. However, when he filled up with Total, he found that the service was below the standard of other petrol stations. "This is a clear example of how advertising is just the visible third of the iceberg - unfortunately, as the Titanic learnt to its peril - it is the two-thirds of the brand iceberg below the surface that can cause the most damage."

Bolt explains that creating a sustainable brand has to include four main steps - what he calls the Brand Fusion Process: brand defining, brand developing, brand deploying and brand defending. Once the values have been defined and developed, they have to be implemented into every aspect of the organisation, including every staff-related process, from recruitment to bonus structures, from performance management to dismissal policies, and they have to be maintained rigorously.

The first step, defining values, may seem easy, but it is where many companies trip up. A company's core values have to be relevant, easy to understand and differentiated from those of the competitors. Everyone is familiar with those cliched corporate value statements that appear in Annual Reports. However, executives should be very careful of these slogans, says Bolt. He quotes a Harvard Business Review article. "Take a look at this list of corporate values - Communication; Respect; Integrity; Excellence. They sound pretty good, don't they? Maybe they even resemble your own company's values... If so, you should be nervous. These are the corporate values of Enron." (HBR, July 2002)

Yet 55% of Fortune 100 companies claim integrity as a core value, 49% claim to give customer satisfaction; 40% espouse teamwork. "These statements do not give guidelines to your staff on what they have to do to support the company's value proposition. They will mean nothing to the people on the factory floor and even less to the bean-counters in the finance department. However, if you say to the factory line supervisors that they must maintain high quality standards, they will know what they have to do."

Bolt points out that creating and implementing an authentic set of brand values demands courage. It means giving something up, and this may mean alienating some employees who do not fit into the organisation's culture.

Many companies put the Human Resources department in charge of value development. Yet this can lead to an attempt to create consensus, in turn creating a politically correct list of amorphous, 'feel-good' values. The brand then becomes the lowest common denominator of each employee's opinion, instead of being the engine that drives the company and its people. "Companies cannot be all things to all people, and this includes its staff," Bolt emphasises.

Deploying corporate values involves aligning every part of an organisation and employee with the company's value proposition. A sustainable brand can only be achieved by reinforcing a company's value proposition in the minds of all of its audiences, including employees. They have to know, and to be constantly reminded, that every thing they do must be aligned with the brand values. Within each department, each team must be able to state the need of the company's customers and how the team can contribute to satisfying those needs. Within each team, each and every individual employee must have a clear idea of how he or she contributes to the company's strategy.

Therefore, in-house training cannot operate in isolation from the rest of the company's marketing strategy. It has to be closely tied to how the business differentiates itself from its competitors and how it makes its promises relevant to its consumers. Each member of staff, from the receptionist to the Managing Director, has to be included in the total brand process. That is the only foolproof formula for sustainability.